Ginny and the Seemingly Extraneous Details
by Rico Perrien
Summary: This is sort of a sequel to 'HP and the Extraneous Details'. Some agendas remain hidden for good reasons. The love-life of teenagers is one such agenda. However, later the same evening ... Warning: Implications, but nothing really happening
1. Prologue

**Ginny Weasley and the Seemingly Extraneous Details**

**Summary: **This is sort of a sequel to 'HP and the Extraneous Details'. Some agendas remain hidden for good reasons, as they may have implications unwanted by those in power (currently). The love-life of teenagers is one such agenda. However, later the same evening ...

**Disclaimer:** I have no claim to characters or scenes from the Harry Potter series, which belongs to JK Rowling and associates. I get nothing from this except the enjoyment of imagining and writing the story. I am making no money from this, bupkus, nada, sweet-tweet, diddly-squat. All errors are my own.

**Rating**: M

**Warning**: Implications of things that every teenager is keenly aware of, to their parents' distress, but nothing really happening

**Author's Notes**: Somewhat non-canonical, just some stuff going on 'off-screen'. Thanks to the late Robert Heinlein and Frank Herbert for some of the concepts. I like to explore the background of how people end up where they do.

Thanks to Clell65619 for 'beta'ing this one. However, I have incorporated only some of his/her suggestions, so don't blame him/her. Hopefully that which was unclear has become clear.

I have incorporated pertinent portions of the previous story (in much abbreviated form) as a prologue. However, this story goes in a very different direction.

**Timeframe:** Early autumn of 1995

**Prologue: **

Early in her fourth year at Hogwarts, Ginny Weasley decided to seduce Harry Potter.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry acknowledged that a school devoted to training young wizards and witches in manipulation of the natural forces must recognize that sexual forces are among the most powerful of these forces. As the school was filled with several hundred adolescent males and females going through puberty, and learning to explore their carnal desires, there was substantial provision made to learn, to express, to explore and to enjoy this facet of their developing lives. To this end, the school appeared to be oversupplied with what were termed 'broom closets'.

In addition to that, Madam Poppy Pomfrey, the school's nurse, skilled medi-witch and fully qualified Healer, had the standing task of roaming the school corridors on weekend evenings, casting additional contraceptive charms into dark corners and seemly empty classrooms. By their fourth year, many of the students had started experimenting with their own sexualities, and Ginny Weasley had decided that it was time for her to test the waters, as it were. Her putative boyfriend, Harry Potter was the obvious target of her current intent.

Ginny knew that she was destined to marry Harry Potter. Primarily because her mother had told her so ever since she was a tiny girl. Growing up, she had heard stories of the wonderful 'Boy-Who-Lived', and she had expected to find that the great Harry Potter was at least six and a half feet tall, and went around wearing a skin-tight suit with a large lightning bolt on his chest. It came as a bit of a shock to discover that the scrawny underfed boy she had first seen when she was ten, who hadn't known how to get onto Platform 9 ¾, was the hero of the wizarding world. However, over the intervening years she found that this was definitely a case of deceptive packaging, and that Harry was strong and very brave, and quite considerate of his friends. He was even kind to her childhood friend Luna, who was not the easiest person to get along with as she seemed to be occupying a world quite different from the one most people were familiar with.

During her first years at Hogwarts, Ginny had been possessed and almost killed, and Harry had saved her life. From many discussions with her dormitory-mates of her age and older, it seemed that the primary way of paying off the 'life-debt', which now existed, was to have sex with the responsible party.

Sex is, of course, one of the principle topics of conversation in any dormitory of either gender, with reactions (roughly correlated with age) of "Why in the world would I want to do _that_?", "_How_ do you do _that_?", "I'm not supposed to do _that _yet?", "I wonder who I would want to do _that_ with?", "When can I do _that_?", and "When I get married, I am going to do _that_ every day!"

However, when she asked Harry's best female friend about the matter, Hermione looked up the subject in the library, and found that there were several other ways to pay the debt, including performing significant good deeds for total strangers.

Ginny was uncertain just how to approach the matter of her relationship with Harry, but believing that she was destined to be his wife, sex was not entirely out of the question. But after extensive thought, she decided that, although that might be the eventual direction of their interactions, she was not really ready yet. After all, she was only fourteen and such activities were definitely frowned upon at that age. She did, however, feel that it was definitely time to move the relationship forward.

Ginny Weasley decided that this Saturday night, a couple of weeks before Hallowe'en, she was going to finally 'seduce' Harry Potter (whatever that meant at this stage) – she herself qualified as a virgin, at least with respect to actually having not been with a boy, although she did have a rather experienced right hand. Ginny knew that she was not ready for a complete exploration of her feelings and desires, but decided that, at her age, kissing and some minimal touching, with perhaps some visual aspects along the lines of 'I'll show you mine if you show me yours', would be as far as she would let things go. Assuming her Gryffindor courage would allow even that much.

She had put on her favourite and prettiest underwear, a forest-green lacy combination, and which, had she actually checked in the mirror before donning her outer clothes, were rather transparent.

She took Harry's hand as they walked down the hallway when she pulled him into a vacant broom closet. Some of the so-called broom closets were actually used to store brooms for the use of the caretaking staff of house elves, but more numerous than these were actually large rooms for storing brooms used for flying, so Ginny and Harry were fairly familiar with the locations of most of those used to store the Gryffindor House brooms.

Ginny whispered to Harry, "I want to show you something". When Harry asked what it might be, she answered, "Me". She kissed him as she slipped her outer robe off her shoulders - it fell to the floor unnoticed at first until she felt it pile up around her legs, so she bent down to pick it up, giving Harry a reasonably clear view down her blouse. She began to unbutton her blouse, revealing the line of lace at the top of her bra.

Harry gulped at this view.

Harry stepped back to get a better view of his girlfriend's progressively more visible brassiere. Doing so and being rather seriously distracted, he tripped over some brooms which had not been hung up properly, and fell heavily to the floor hitting his head. Harry Potter, the agile seeker of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, was knocked out cold.

Ginny looked down at the pile of her unconscious boyfriend lying on the floor. Her first thought was to somehow notify the schools nurse and get help. Her second thought was that, once again, she would be spending the night chastely his hand as he lay in his regular bed in the infirmary, and then the elderly medi-witch would hover like a vulture around the young couple. She grimaced, and said "Oh crap! What do I do now?"


	2. What Level Are You?

**Ginny Weasley and the Seemingly Extraneous Details**

**Disclaimer:** I have no claim to characters or scenes from the Harry Potter series, which belongs to JK Rowling and associates. I get nothing from this except the enjoyment of imagining and writing the story. I am making no money from this, bupkus, nada, sweet-tweet, diddly-squat. All errors are my own.

**Rating**: M

**Warning**: Implications of things that every teenager is keenly aware of, to their parents' distress, but nothing really happening

**Author's Notes**: Thanks to Clell65619 for 'beta'ing this one. However, I have incorporated only some of his/her suggestions, so don't blame him/her. Hopefully that which was unclear has become clear.

**What Level are you?**

As Ginny looked down at her unconscious presumptive boyfriend, wondering quite what to do, there was a knocking on the door of the broom closet.

"Miss Weasley, it's Madam Pomfrey. Do you need help?"

Ginny quickly buttoned up her blouse, and opened the door. "Madam Pomfrey, how did you know anything had happened? And how did you know it was me in here?"

The Matron did some rapid diagnostic spells, and nodded with a slight smile, saying "Good, not too serious." She looked at the young red-haired witch, with a bemused smile. "I have some devices that detect any injuries happening to students, and one that specifically focuses on Mr Potter. The meter indicated that he had been hurt, so I rushed down here. Given his history, I was surprised Harry hasn't been injured before now this term. , I have seen the way you and he have been looking at each other, and I logically assumed the rest." At Ginny's blushing and starting to stammer an embarrassed explanation, she added, "you needn't worry about your privacy – the detectors only sense when a student is injured, nothing more or less, and I would not wish to intrude."

She drew her wand, and levitated the non-responsive wizard out of the broom closet, conducted some additional cursory diagnostic spells, shook her head ruefully as if saying to herself 'not again', cast three brief restorative and preservative spells, checked her diagnostics again, nodded with a brief "Hmph", and turned to head towards the infirmary. She conjured a stretcher under Harry and proceeded towards the hospital wing with the stretcher-borne student floating beside her.

She stopped, looked at Ginny, and asked, "Would you mind accompanying me? There are a couple of more complex healing spells I could use your assistance with, and you might like to learn. Also, I presume you wanted to sit with him this evening. When anyone strikes their head on these stone floors, there is always the potential of a concussion, so we need to keep a vigil for a couple of hours to watch for adverse symptoms, and frankly it gets boring. I could really use the company."

The surprised Ginny quickly agreed, and the two women, walked rapidly towards the hospital wing, floating Harry's body in front of them. As they walked, Ginny blushed and asked how Madam Pomfrey knew to look in the broom closets.

The elder witch smiled. "Do you think that the builders of this place didn't know what really goes on when young people have time on their hands? They were powerful and knowledgeable about the human condition, which means they were well aware of what young men and women do in each other's company. Finding some joy in this life is not something to be dismissed out-of-hand, and I for one do never begrudge you that, at all."

Ginny was taken aback by this rather unexpected statement from the usually stern witch. It almost sounded like she was lonely. Ginny Weasley had never considered the emotional drain on someone who, more often than not, only saw the students when they were injured, sometimes critically. The fact that Madam Pomfrey was actually a fully trained healer, and not just a nurse, was a clear sign that Hogwarts was a bit more dangerous than your typical (muggle) school, but then typical schools to not have to deal with dragons.

As they got to the door of the infirmary, Ginny asked "Do you want him in his 'usual' bed?" to which Madam Pomfrey replied "Of course, where else would we put him? He practically _owns_ that bed." The older woman and the younger no-longer-really-a-girl- but-not-yet-quite-a-woman chuckled together as they floated the unconscious boy's body across the room. Ginny moved forward to turn down the sheets while the nurse rotated the body and laid it down gently, turning Harry onto his left side so that the back of his head was exposed.

Although there were no other patients in the room, Madam Pomfrey summoned a couple of privacy screens to surround the bed. Ginny wondered if the nurse had some special treatment in mind, or this was just force of habit.

The mediwitch turned to Ginny and said, "Miss Weasley, I mentioned I could use your assistance. Concussions are a bruising of the brain. The diagnostic spells I need to cast are not onerous in themselves, but depending on the extent of the damage, we may need to use life-force spells to heal the injury. Stone floors are very hard, harder than most heads, although some of the students in this place make me wonder sometimes. Anyway, when dealing with life forces, there are special requirements needed for the appropriate spells. For instance, they require two persons, both with magical abilities. Plus there are other, shall I say, more specific requirements." The nurse paused, as if she was a bit embarrassed.

"Therefore, Miss Weasley, I have to ask you some personal questions."

Ginny wondered what questions they could be, after being caught in the broom closet with her clothing in mild disarray. She looked at Madam Pomfrey, and nodded. "Please go ahead. If curing Harry needs me to answer some personal questions, please do. After all, I grew up with six older brothers – I don't embarrass that easily."

The nurse nodded her head. "Very well, then. Are you a virgin?"

Ginny gasped and blushed, to her own surprise. "Yes"

Pomfrey nodded, "Good. What degree of virgin are you?"

Ginny looked puzzled. "What do you mean 'what degree'? There are different degrees?"

The Matron shook her head in disgust. Barely holding in her anger, she said "I keep telling the Board of Directors that we need to teach this stuff to the first and second year girls. By the time they learn about it, it is too late! Dammit!"

She looked at Ginny, and said "Sorry for that outburst, but I have been trying to get this information to the girls for thirty going on forty years, and the Board won't listen. They seem to think that girls and boys won't think of sex or related topics if we don't tell them about them. Idiots and puritanical fools!"

"Okay Miss Weasley, I will explain. Different spells involving the life forces require the spell casters to have different levels of sexual experience, some more and some less. For example, I am a level 2 non-virgin, in that I have been married and have experienced orgasms, but have not borne children. Your mother is a Level 1, and I must say, with a gold star for having seven healthy offspring."

Ginny's mind started to speculate at this news, but Madam Pomfrey returned to her topic.

"For virgins, there are many more levels, depending on their level of experience. For most spells, it doesn't matter much but for life-force spells it does. Depending on the available, shall I say, talent, I have to choose an appropriate spell. As I am no longer a virgin myself, I cannot contribute that part of the spell, but hopefully you can. Fully-trained and powerful Level 1 virgins are extremely rare nowadays. When I need one, I have to get Amelia, sorry, Madam Pince from the library. If I need only a fully trained and powerful level 3 virgin, Aurora Sinistra will usually help out."

Ginny frowned. "Why them?" she asked, realizing that she sounded rather offended that these witches could provide abilities or qualifications which she herself could not.

Poppy Pomfrey sighed. "As I said, they just don't teach this stuff! Amelia is a retired Vestal. The Order of Vesta is extremely strict on their requirements, and girls are usually recruited before they are ten years old to make sure they qualify".

"Aurora used to be in the British Valkyries Guild – they also require level ones and she joined in her second year here. Apparently, with the decreases in wizarding population in the first war against You-Know-Who, and the increased mechanization of warfare for the muggles, there wasn't a lot of call for individual one-on-one heroic combat. With the Guild's seniority rules and her being among the youngest in the Guild, there wasn't a lot of work for her, so she quit. She could have stayed a Level 1, but didn't."

Ginny looked puzzled at this explanation, which explained little. She said, "Okay, the personal questions. I assume that they have to do with deciding how much of a virgin I am."

Pomfrey nodded. "Correct."

Ginny looked at her boyfriend lying in the bed, and said, "Well if we're going to get on with healing him, we should get at it. Ask away."

Poppy Pomfrey nodded, and said, "Okay. Question 1, have you ever had a male's penis inside your vagina?"

Ginny was stunned. "I said I was a virgin! No!"

Pomfrey nodded. "Good. Some girls don't seem to understand the concept – some believe that if they didn't enjoy the experience or they didn't get pregnant, they are still a virgin. So, we have established that you are at least a level 9 virgin. Have you ever had a male's penis in your anus?"

Ginny looked disgusted. "Ew! No! That is _so_ gross!"

Pomfrey shook her head ruefully. "Some women like it, and some have intercourse that way rather than risk pregnancy. There is less interference with the life force's assessment of virginal status, thus the higher level. Okay, at least level eight."

"Have you ever pleasured yourself with an artificial penis made from non-living matter, inserting it into your vagina?"

Ginny shook her head vigorously.

"Have you done so with something that had been alive, like a cucumber or wooden substitute?" Again Ginny shook her head violently.

"Okay, level six at least. Have you had someone massage you to the point of climax? Male?" Ginny shuck her head.

"Female?" Another shake. Ginny was by now blushing furiously, and whimpered "No, never."

Pomfrey nodded. "Have you yourself masturbated to the point of orgasm?"

Ginny blushed and nodded. "Yes, I have. I guess that makes me only a level three, right? Is that enough for healing Harry?" By this point she was starting to weep a bit. Was she '_good_' enough for Harry?

Ginny smiled as Madam Pomfrey nodded and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Yes child, you'll do just fine.

Ginny smirked. "Okay, my turn. What are the requirements for levels one and two?"

Pomfrey nodded and said, "For a two, the witch can have touched but not bring herself to completion, and for level one, there can have never been even the touching. You see now why they are so rare, when the school won't even mention it until an age where a lot of girls in the dorms have been, shall I say, comforting each other from the cold and homesickness. Some lifelong relations start that way, and good for them, but it makes the essential work of healers just that much more difficult."

Ginny straightened up her back, preparing for the task ahead. "Yeah, a lot of that goes on. Winter nights get cold in this old castle. Okay, what do we do now?"

Pomfrey looked at her and smiled. "Now, we strip."

Ginny's jaw dropped. "What?"

Pomfrey smiled and giggled, "Yes, we undress. Ginny, I have to undress too, for these spells. Life-force spells have to be done nude. And if I may be so bold, I suspect you had intended to undress this evening, but not with Harry unconscious."

Ginny looked down at her out-of-it boyfriend, and then at the elder witch. "But Harry is right there!"

Poppy grinned and said, "Yes he is, but he is unconscious right now, which is why we are doing this. So he won't see anything. And don't all us girls want to give our boyfriends a sneak peak once in a while? Or at least fantasize of showing off when he might look, but can't? "

Ginny smiled wickedly. "Is this why you put up the screens? To protect our 'modesty' if someone comes in?"

The elder witch nodded. "A couple of reasons really. First, if someone comes into the infirmary, we don't shock them too badly. After all, if they are coming here, they are probably hurt already. You say you don't embarrass easily, but how would you feel if the Headmaster wandered into the room and saw you starkers? You know, when Harry gets hurt, he often pops in to check. Me, he has seen nude many times, so no big shock there, but the view of you would be new to him, and him seeing you in that condition, I suspect, would be a bit disturbing to you as well."

"And how would you feel if Mr Malfoy wandered in?" Ginny heard Madam Pomfrey mutter under her breath something that sounded suspiciously like "Malicious little pile of worthless dragon shit!" As Ginny started to snicker, Poppy smiled and said "I bet he would be spreading rumours about me trying to seduce you, or you trying to seduce me. That would be around the school in minutes." She sighed and added, "There are times when I wish my Healers' Oath didn't require me to treat all my patients with the same respect."

"Lastly, it's a bit easier casting warming spells in a smaller area surrounded by the screens. Doesn't take as much magical energy, and the life-spells do take some major effort. For concussions, we need to cast a number of spells over about an hour and a half, and this place gets a little chilly sitting around in just your skin."


	3. Working Clothes

**Ginny Weasley and the Seemingly Extraneous Details**

**Disclaimer:** I have no claim to characters or scenes from the Harry Potter series, which belongs to JK Rowling and associates. I get nothing from this except the enjoyment of imagining and writing the story. I am making no money from this, bupkus, nada, sweet-tweet, diddly-squat. All errors are my own.

**Rating**: M

**Warning**: Implications of things that every teenager is keenly aware of, to their parents' distress, but nothing really happening

**Author's Notes**: Thanks to Clell65619 for 'beta'ing this one. However, I have incorporated only some of his/her suggestions, so don't blame him/her. Hopefully that which was unclear has become clear.

**Working Clothes**

Ginny started removing her school robe, while Madam Pomfrey began unbuttoning her nursing smock.

The young witch looked a bit worried. "What if I wasn't _enough_ of a virgin?"

The older witch smiled, and said "Well, I would have had to change which spells I could use, or depending on what injuries needed healing, see if I could get someone else to help. But I'm glad you were there and willing and able, and qualified, to assist me. I gather that you are worried that, had it happened a bit later, you might not be, shall I say, as 'qualified'. Right?"

Ginny nodded, ruefully.

Pomfrey touched Ginny's shoulder reassuringly, and said, 'There are spells we can use when the there is love between the injured person and the other, and in fact they are more powerful if the two were each other's reasons for the lack of virginal status. Lovers share a bond which strengthens the magic."

By this point, the two witches were down to their underwear. As is typical of teenage girls, Ginny was very aware of the bodies of other girls at the school (with the insecurities of teenage years, there was a constant comparison of her own development to that of her schoolmates). She noticed that Madam Pomfrey usually looked much more buxom than she did at this moment.

Shyly, she started to ask, "Madam...", when Poppy laughed, looking down at her chest, and then knowingly at Ginny. "You're wondering where my knockers went, aren't you? Come on, no need to be shocked, I haven't been an innocent child for a long time – besides, as a healer, reality always gets in the way of personal modesty. The thing is, for the nude life-force spells, the damned things get in the way, so a light reduction spell, and I'm ready to go." Ginny blushed at this revelation.

Pomfrey laughed again. "I somehow doubt this is a spell that most of your dorm-mates would care to know. Usually at your age, they want the opposite effect, although your Miss Brown might come to appreciate a bit of a lighter load as the years go by."

Poppy Madam Pomfrey looked at Ginny's forest-green knickers and bra, and nodded. "Very nice. Very pretty. They go very nicely with your colours. Kind of reminds me of something I can't quite recall just now. Ah well, no matter." The older woman's eyes got a bit of a far-away look as if she was trying to remember something from long ago.

Ginny looked at Poppy's rather odd underwear, being a camisole and mid-thigh French-style knickers which seemed to be made of gold thread, and looked wet. Madam Pomfrey saw Ginny's puzzled look, and nodded.

"You like my 'potion pants', do you? They _are_ rather special, aren't they. You see, some medical potions have ingredients which are rather explosive, so we have to take precautions against any static electricity."

Ginny frowned. "My dad told me that, as _he_ calls it, 'electrumicity' can't work at Hogwarts. Something about the high level of magic here stops it working."

The elder witch nodded, "Very true for low voltage used for running muggle devices. But high voltage charges still happen. You've seen lightning here. In your dorm, when you're changing clothes in winter, particularly your wool skirts, you sometimes see little flashes of light." Ginny nodded. "In winter, the air gets so dry, any rustling cloth can generate sparks, and those can make the more volatile potions explode, so I wear the special healers' undies. The silk threads are coated with gold and charmed to stay wet so they conduct the electricity away, and you don't have sparks." She snickered. "Or at least, depending on who sees them, not electrical ones."

This was a frisky side of the medi-witch Ginny had certainly never seen before.

Poppy grinned at the younger witch. "In my healers' training, when we started working with the potions, we all had to strip down to our undies. Some of the girls had these and had no trouble with the more volatile solutions, while some of us (me for example) had some small explosions. By the second week, we all had the gold gaunchies. Because they shorted out the electricity, the boys called them 'short-out shorts'!"

Ginny was stunned. "The classes were mixed?"

Poppy nodded, "I guess you haven't taken advanced charms yet, have you. I would have thought you would have heard about them from your mother or your older house-mates. A lot of the more advanced life-force charms have to be done nude, and in mixed couples. Sometimes, well, shall I say, things get a bit carried away. After all, that's how your brother Bill got started."

Ginny looked shocked at this revelation.

As she started to object, Madam Pomfrey said, "Oh, come on girl, you knew your parents eloped at just about graduation time. Didn't you ever wonder why? Or count the days before the full-term-sized 'premature' baby was born? The standard line is that new brides are just very efficient." Her light laugh took her back to her school days, when boys were her only problem.

By this point, both women had completely disrobed.

Ginny was surprised to see a very nasty scar on Poppy's upper left thigh, and another on her left forearm. She said, "If you don't mind me asking...", pointing at the scars.

The matron smiled and said "Souvenirs of my first attempt to play quidditch."

Ginny frowned. "But you could have those scars removed very easily, couldn't you?"

The older witch nodded. "I could, but I have decided not to. For one, they are a constant reminder to pay attention when you're doing something dangerous – some lessons are cheaper than others, and this was a very important one! For another, they are a reminder of a very bad, and also a very good day. That was the day I was badly injured and really scared my best friends, and it was the day I chose my life's work. It was also the day I met my husband." Her eyes took on a sad look, and then she said, "I may tell you about that later."

Ginny nodded, and then looked rather uncertain. "Madam Pomfrey, What do we do now? And what do I need to do?"

Madam Pomfrey looked at the younger witch and looking down at their unclothed bodies, said, "If we are going to work together like this, I think we can be a bit less formal, don't you. Please call me Poppy."

Ginny nodded and smiled with a bit of a worried look. "I'll try. Mum and Dad taught me to try show respect to my elders and the professors and staff at Hogwarts."

Poppy smiled and said "And do you call your quidditch teammates Mr Potter, or Mr Weasley, or Miss Bell? No. Ginny, tonight, you and I are a team."

"So. I believe you are right-handed, that is, you use your wand in your right hand, yes? Good. What we need to do is this. We put our left hands on Harry's forehead and touch his head with our wands, I speak the spell, and you respond 'Fiat, fiat fiat, voluntatis tuo' meaning 'As you will it, make it so'. We shift our hands to the back of his head over the wound, and repeat the same incantations. Then I will speak the second spell, and you respond 'Fiat voluntatis mea', meaning 'as I will it, do it' – during the incantation, I would like you to drag your long hair, over Harry's face, so he has more contact with your presence (in fact, if you can touch his face with your breasts, the spell works even better, but your position would get rather awkward). Then you do the only spell that muggles use - the magic doesn't work for them, but they do it anyway, and in a way it seems to work with little children". Poppy smiled at Ginny's astonishment.

The girl asked "What is the spell that muggles can use too?"

Poppy grinned. "We said it as 'Fiat melior, fiat bene!' and kiss the wounded spot. Your friend Miss Granger would recognise it as a mother kissing the child's 'boo-boo' to 'make it better'. Remember, with magic, the intent is a major factor in how effective the spell can be."

"Then we wait and watch. Sometimes, depending on how severe the concussion, we have to do it twice or more. Then after an hour, we do a couple more spells to repair any residual damage, and then an hour later, we check and then let him sleep and recover. And while we wait, we can chat about whatever comes to mind. I have some things I would like to discuss with you."

Although a bit puzzled by this last comment, Ginny looked down at Harry, who had been lying there for a good twenty minutes without treatment, and said "Okay, let's do it before he dies on us!"

As the women laid their hands on the young man's forehead, Poppy's voice deepened as she chanted, "Reparo cranium, reparo cerebellum, reparo cerebrum!", and nodded to Ginny, who responded as she had been told. This was repeated with their left hands on the back of Harry's wounded head.

Then Poppy's voice took on a softer, almost loving tone, as she said "Reparo tuto, in nomine virga inamorate", and as Ginny spoke the response, she realized the spell was "In the name of the young woman who loves you, repair everything," to which she was responding, 'Make it so, because I want it to be so'.

She then kissed Harry's head, to make it better.

**Author's note: ** Yeah, I know my Latin sucks. I kind of doubt a lot of what passes for Latin in a lot of fan fics are very accurate.


	4. Reminiscing

**Ginny Weasley and the Seemingly Extraneous Details**

**Disclaimer:** I have no claim to characters or scenes from the Harry Potter series, which belongs to JK Rowling and associates. I get nothing from this except the enjoyment of imagining and writing the story. I am making no money from this, bupkus, nada, sweet-tweet, diddly-squat.

**Rating**: M

**Warning**: Implications of things that every teenager is keenly aware of, to their parents' distress, but nothing really happening

**Author's Notes**: Thanks to Clell65619 for 'beta'ing this one. However, I have incorporated only some of his/her suggestions, so don't blame him/her. Hopefully that which was unclear has become clear. All errors are my own.

**Reminiscing**

Poppy turned over an hourglass to indicate when they would be redoing the healing spells. She had double-checked her diagnostic spells, and nodded with satisfaction.

The healer pulled up a couple of chairs, which puzzled Ginny. She asked "Why didn't you just summon them over, or conjure them up, Poppy?"

The older witch smiled, and said, "Healing charms take a lot of energy. Why waste good magic just to prove we're not muggles, when the chairs are only a short distance away, and it's just as easy to reach out and grab them? We're going to need our magic again in an hour. I try to not get in the habit of doing everything magically."

"In my job, I see too many young wizards and witches who desperately need more exercise, the way they feed them in this place. Sure, they get lots of walking around this old castle going up and down all the stairs, but you should see how many of them have heart-attacks as soon as they graduate and have their house elves doing all their manual labour. Obesity has probably killed more pure-bloods and muggle-borns than old What's-His-Hyphenated-Name-That- Everyone-Is-Too-Scared-To-Say."

"Whipsy?", the matron called out. With a faint pop, a house elf appeared at her side. Madam Pomfrey looked over at Ginny, and asked "Tea? Coffee? Or something stronger? And would you like a bathrobe or something, or shall we just sit here in our skin?

The younger witch shook her head. "I don't think I want anything stronger. My brothers gave me some fire-whisky, and it was awful. And a robe sounds nice. It does seem a bit weird just sitting here waiting for our skin to stick to the chairs."

Poppy looked at her, and said "That's the only thing you've tried? You have a world of learning to do. Tell you what, I'll get you something you might like. Whipsy, please bring us some hot chocolate with a bit of Grande Marnier in it, and another hot chocolate with some Creme de Menthe in it. And could you bring Ginny a robe, please?" The elf nodded and disappeared.

Poppy turned to Ginny and said "You know, when I was going to school here, I really got tired of pumpkin juice."

The elf reappeared shortly with two pitchers from which steam was rising. Poppy had gone to her office, and returned wearing her own robe, as the elf handed Ginny a fleecy bathrobe in the crimson and gold Gryffindor colours.

Ginny was a bit leery of trying anything with steam coming off it, given some of the things her twin brothers had concocted, but Poppy poured herself a cup from one pitcher, and sipped it, smiled and thanked the elf. She then poured a cup for Ginny. The younger woman sipped it and a warm glow came over her.

Ginny said, "This is wonderful. What is it?"

The elder witch nodded, and said, "It's hot chocolate, a drink very popular with muggles, but with an orange flavoured liqueur added to it. You could say it's one of _my_ favourite 'potions'." At Ginny's puzzled look, she added, "A liqueur is a drink that takes the essential flavours of fruits and/or herbs and mixes them with alcohol to preserve them. Don't worry about the alcohol – it evaporates quickly as soon as you add the hot chocolate, and by now there is no alcohol in it, just the flavour. The pitchers will keep the drinks hot, so if you want more, please feel free."

"While I was getting my robe, I remembered what I was trying to recall a bit ago. Do you remember your grandmother Kelenna?

Ginny nodded, "Yes, I remember Grandma Kelly, a bit. She died when I was about eight. She always seemed so sad."

Poppy leaned back in her chair as she reminisced. "I remember Kelenna Goudig from my own school days. Actually, I knew all your grandparents, as well as your parents when they were in school. Your grandparents were a few years ahead of me, but all of them, except Cedrella Black, has such bright red hair, who could forget them."

"You know, I always thought it funny that the Hat always sorts your family into Gryffindor, where the house colours go so badly with your hair and skin colours. I've decided that the Hat must be male with that bad a colour sense. If it sorted the new students based on colours, you would all be in Slytherin, but that's another issue, isn't it."

"Anyway, Kelly was four years ahead of me, another Ravenclaw, so she was in her seventh year when I was a thirdie. I don't know how things work in Gryffindor, but in Ravenclaw, once a month, we had a girl's night. Just the girls, talking over anything and everything - boys, breasts, homework, boys, fashions, sex, what to get at the school commissary and what to hold off until the Hogmeade weekends for, boys, which teachers you loved or hated and why, just about everything. The parties were usually the Friday before all our periods started (the dormitory effect, you know), and the older girls would help the 'beginners' understand what was happening to them their first time. In a way, we all became sisters to each other. We were there for each other, no matter what. We might not always like each other, but we were there."

"The gatherings were extremely casual, with everyone in sweats, or nighties, or their underwear. There was usually some booze, firewhisky or rum or brandy – we used to say that if you were too dumb to smuggle booze into the dorm for a party, then you were too stupid to be a Ravenclaw. Anyway, Kelenna had red hair the same as you, and always wore something the same colour green as your undies (although, I must say, never quite as transparent as your lacy ones tonight). You look a lot like her, which is what reminded me as we undressed."

"I always found it funny how many girls had botanical names, and how few boys do. I can understand it for those who claim that they descended from tree nymphs, with names like Ashley, Willow, Yewnice, Hazel, Elma and Holly. Kelenna is actually the feminine form of the Breton word for Holly, and Kelenna insisted that with her red hair, she felt compelled to always wear forest-green. The only one I've ever seen for boys was 'Cedaric', but they usually leave out the 'a'."

"You knew that Kelenna was a refugee from Brittany from before what the muggles called the 'Second World War', didn't you? No? Well, her family were Breton nationalists, as well as being against the dark side. In the thirties, even before France fell to the Nazis, there were some French fascist groups which had some very dark wizards in their organizations. Once the war started, they worked with the Gestapo magic branch, and the French collaborators used _their_ connections and methods to try completely wipe out the Bretons. She and her family could see the war and the persecution coming, and had fled to England in the late 30's."

"She had met your grandfathers and some other of their friends when they all attended a summer camp in Brittany, exploring some of the old stone circles and alignments of menhirs, and touring the Broceliande Forest where Merlin is buried. The camp had students from Beauxbatons as well as from Hogwarts and Durmstrang, and so when Kelly and her family came over to the UK, they were already familiar with some of the Hogwarts kids."

"Kelenna never trusted the French. I suspect this is why your mother is having so much trouble accepting your brother Bill's love for Miss Delacour from Beauxbatons. Well, that, and it's hard for a mother to let go of her firstborn to the arms of another woman, no matter how necessary that is for her to let him grow up and start his own life and family."

"You know, there are a lot of girls' names which are flowers or shrubs, but only a few for herbs. You've got mine, Poppy Fields as I was before I got married (and don't you know I got teased a lot with _that_ kind of a name), your own which is a Belgian or Dutch version of 'Juniper', our unfortunate dead Myrtle Summers, and so on. Rose, Iris, Lily, Petunia, and such. Even 'Fleur', which of course is French for 'Flower'."

"Not so much for boys. Other than shortening Herbert to 'Herb', you never hear of a boy (or girl for that matter) called 'Mint'. Well, I guess there _is_ 'Basil'.

"How do you feel about Fleur Delacour? From what little I have seen, you don't seem to get along with her very well at all. Why is that? Has she done something to you?"

Ginny paused, shocked. She had never thought about it, but now realized that whenever she had been around Fleur, she had been very mean and sarcastic, calling her 'Phlegm', and making cruel jokes.

She said "I don't really know. Maybe it's following my Mum's discomfort with her. I remember Grandma Kelly saying, with her heavy accent "Never trust ze French!" Maybe it's because most of my brothers turn into gibbering idiots around her, not that that would be much of a change. Maybe it's because Bill was my protector when Fred and George would pester me when I was little, and Fleur is taking him away from me."

"Merlin, thinking about it, I have been a prime bitch to her, and she has never done anything to me except fall in love with my big brother. I really should be happy for him. And for her."

Poppy smiled, and asked quietly, "Do you think there might be a little bit of hero worship going on there, and you're not comfortable with Bill being a man, just a man, with feelings and a live of his own, and a future where he's living his own life away from you?"

Ginny nodded, looking a bit disgusted with herself.

Poppy thought to herself "this little girl is starting to grow up." She knew that a bit of introspection is not a bad thing.

She then asked "And how do you feel about Harry? Are you still in love with the 'Boy-Who-Lived' from your mother's stories?"

Again, Ginny was stunned. She nodded, and said "Maybe a bit. But I don't remember having the feelings I have for him now when my Mum read me the stories." Realizing what she had just admitted, Ginny blushed a vivid red.

Poppy touched Ginny on the arm. "Don't be ashamed or afraid of your feelings. They are good ones. But aren't you afraid that it might be a bit more hero worship than actual love of the person?"

Ginny shook her head. "I don't think so. I know I was completely intimidated by him when we first met. Here was the hero from my story books. But I've gotten to see him with all his faults. He can't travel by floo without making a total mess of his arrival and falling all over the floor. He gets angry. He gets mad at Ron and Hermione when they argue. And he can't get his hair to behave. Not exactly a story-book hero."

"Yes, he does some amazing stuff. He saved Hermione in his first year, and me in his second. He doesn't seem to have any fear, although I know that a lot of the time he is scared of a lot of things. He worries a lot about the future. I have heard some of the stories of his family, and I think he would have had to be a bloody hero just to get out of bed every day!"

"No, I think the real heroes are my brothers Bill and Ron."

Madam Pomfrey looked very puzzled by this statement. "How so? You're the first person who I have heard ever say that about Ron."

Ginny nodded. "When I was little, Ron would try to protect me from the other kids at school, and from the twins. Those two are a piece of work. They call it 'pranking' – I call it bullying! Their pranks are to embarrass, and humiliate, and hurt. Mum would scold them whenever they 'pranked' me or Ron, and they thought that was hilarious. They seemed to feel that it was the two of them against the world. At school, I would often find myself standing with my friends totally naked, or with a beard, or whatever, with Fred and George across the playground laughing their heads off. They would do this to other kids too, and it got so that some would just break down crying their heads off, often just at the sight of George or Fred. Of course, Luna - you knew that Luna Lovegood and I went to primary school together? Anyway, Luna was so completely nonchalant about it all that they quickly lost interest in teasing her."

"Ron would try to make them stop, or if some older or bigger kid tried to bully me (especially when I was standing there in my undies or naked), Ron would try to fight them off. He got beat up a lot those years. Of course, that just made the twins pick on him even more. You've seen how he has so little confidence in his ability to do things, except play chess. I think that Ron's problem with self-esteem was both because of the twins picking on him, and because of me."

Poppy frowned. "Why because of you?"

Ginny sighed. "Because I was born, and I am my parents' _last_ child. Again, the twins. They teased him that Mum and Dad desperately wanted to have a girl, so when I was born they quit having sex - which, from the sounds in the night I heard growing up, was a lie. They told him that he was just the result of Mum and Dad's failure to have me. Even though Dad sat him down and told him in no uncertain terms it was false, I often saw him glance at me suspiciously, particularly after Mum told the boys to protect me from other kids, which he apparently saw as indicating that my safety was more important than his."

"Anyway, when Harry went off to save Hermione in his first year, Ron went with him. To Harry, she was a housemate, and the first female friend he had ever had, in spite of her being bossy, which he thought was just people's normal behaviour. Ron despised Hermione at that point, because he hated being bossed around - usually by the twins or by Mum, - and would have had absolutely no interest in saving her, but he went anyway, and attacked a fully-grown troll. In second year, he went down with Harry to the Chamber to try save me. He is terrified of spiders, but he followed spiders into the Forbidden Forest anyway."

"Ron is one of my heroes. He is very brave, even when he doesn't think he can help much, he goes anyway. My Dad told me once that a brave man knows when to be afraid, but a hero goes and does what needs to be done in spite of being terrified. That's my brother Ron."

"I told you Bill was my protector when I was very little. Now, he probably knows more Dark Arts than anyone except maybe Lord Whoziss, and maybe even him. But does he use this to hurt people. No! He _breaks_ curses! He's a very good man, my brother Bill."

Poppy nodded as she smiled. "I thought I understood that you were a bit of a prankster yourself. I heard you had a number of nasty hexes that you use on people."

Ginny shook her head fiercely. "Only in self-defence! _I am not my twin brothers!_ I had to learn a few hexes to get them to leave me alone."

Poppy looked at the young witch suspiciously. "What about that incident last year with Vincent Crabbe? He claims that you attacked him without cause."

"Without cause, my ah..., foot! He, and the other troll he and Malfoy hang around with, grabbed me when I was walking alone down a corridor in the night. He was pulling me into one of the classrooms, probably for no good. I had heard stories of girls being abused, stunned, and obliviated so that they didn't know who did it to them! Wasn't going to happen to me. Malfoy was already in the room, smirking when he saw me dragged in. I had to act fast. From what I heard, Malfoy and the other one, Goyle, were able to resolve their problem, which consisted on their underpants being shrunk about 5 sizes, so that they were in severe discomfort." She started to chuckle. "I gather you had to remove Crabbe's pants surgically. I guess I underestimated how fat he was and shrunk them more and he couldn't get them off without assistance. Discomfort, but with prompt treatment, no lasting damage, which is more than I can say for their apparent intentions for me."

Poppy smiled. "I thought that what you did had to be in self-defence. I was rather surprised you left them off so lightly. I am not sure that I would have done so. I was also impressed that what you did would have no lasting effect, but definitely got your point across."

Ginny smirked "Well, I did sort of tell them that next time I wouldn't be as nice." The two laughed at this, and then Poppy grew pensive again.

"A question for you, Ginny. What do you plan to do after you leave school? I hear you are a talented quidditch player – are you thinking of a career in that direction?"

Ginny nodded and smiled. "I've thought of it. I would certainly like to try it, but the competition for those teams is really fierce and I don't know if I could make it. I know my Mum wants me to settle down, preferably with Harry, and have ninety kids that she can spoil, and I might like that someday, but I think I would like to try show I can do more than just be a stay-at-home mother."

"My Mum is rather over-protective, and as her only daughter, she is really obsessive about me being safe. She hates it that I really like quidditch, which is a bit strange as she was a really good chaser herself when she was at school. I think part of it is that she lost her brothers in the Voldemort war. I mentioned that Grandma Kelly, her mother, always seemed rather sad, and I suspect that had something to do with it."

"She gets really protective whenever Ron or I do anything the least bit risky. Unfortunately, hanging around with Harry Potter seems to attract trouble, and I get the distinct impression that there is another war coming. They try to keep these things from 'the little girl', but I'm not that stupid, at least I hope I'm not, and I think that Mum, Dad, and I suspect Bill, are in some secret organization with Professor Dumbledore trying to prepare for it."

Madam Pomfrey was rather surprised that Ginny had basically deduced the existence of the Order of the Phoenix. She nodded. "You may be right. One hears rumours."

"However, you may have noted that most professional quidditch players don't last very long in the top ranks. It can be a vicious game. People have been killed. I know. I was the team healer for the Winchester Cathedral Bats for a number of years when I got out of Healers' Training."

"What I was thinking of suggesting is that you consider some Healer's training. That way, you could work with quidditch teams, whether you make the team or not. I know that's not the best idea if you don't make the team yourself, kind of like putting food in front of a starving person and not letting them eat. I think it would be a good idea to have some training yourself because if you make the pro's, you _will_ get injured – I can guarantee that. So once you finish playing, yourself, you would still have a good career ahead of you."

"We had one big guy in the Bats, a beater, who might have caught a few too many bludgers to the head, and figured that he was going to be a quidditch player all his life or die. Three years later, he was forced to retire with serious injuries, and had no real skills outside 'the Game'. Fortunately for him, the team management had put an insurance policy on him, so he's not destitute, but as far as he is concerned, his life is over."

"I wouldn't want to see that happen to you. Also, in spite of what you might think possible, most teams will not let you play when you're pregnant. There is just too much danger. Your balance is all off, among other things. Training practice, maybe, but not in a pro game."

"Ginny, from what you have told me, I think that you could make a good Healer. Your use of hexes and defence spells are not malicious, and you cause only as much damage as is absolutely necessary, and no more. That attitude would serve you well in this profession."

Ginny nodded thoughtfully. Somehow, she got the impression that she had just passed some sort of a test. She then looked at the older witch and said "Poppy, if you don't mind me asking, how did you get into Healing? And why here at Hogwarts? It sounds like you had quite a career out in the 'world'. Why end up at a school, stuck up here in the Highlands?"

Poppy smiled a sad smile. "For that, I will have to start with a story of three scared little girls."


	5. The Calling of a Healer

**Ginny Weasley and the Seemingly Extraneous Details**

**Disclaimer:** I have no claim to characters or scenes from the Harry Potter series, which belongs to JK Rowling and associates. I get nothing from this except the enjoyment of imagining and writing the story. I am making no money from this, bupkus, nada, sweet-tweet, diddly-squat. All errors are my own.

**Rating**: M

**Warning**: Implications of things that every teenager is keenly aware of, to their parents' distress, but nothing really happening

**Author's Notes**: Thanks to Clell65619 for 'beta'ing this one. However, I have incorporated only some of his/her suggestions, so don't blame him/her. Hopefully that which was unclear has become clear.

**The Calling of a Healer**

Madam Pomfrey paused, and poured herself another mug of hot chocolate. She looked at Ginny and asked "Would you like some more with the orange flavour, or with the mint this time?"

Ginny decided to try the mint flavoured drink, and sat back to hear the story.

Poppy leaned back in her chair. Her eyes lost their focus as she cast her mind back into her past.

"It was early October of 1938, my first year at Hogwarts, and it was just before the start of the World War. Everyone was talking about quidditch, and a lot of the house teams were practicing to get sharp after the summer off. We firsties had just had our first flying lessons and a couple of my dorm-mates and I thought we would try our hands at it. Having been sorted into Ravenclaw, of course we felt that we could figure out how to do anything that any of the other houses could. Wrong, wrong, wrong."

"A couple of the upper-year Gryffindor boys were practicing. They were chasers, and were tossing a quaffle around, flying in elaborate patterns. Slowly at first to get back into the feel of it, then faster and faster and faster. One of them was one of your grandfathers, who I had seen a bit of because he was dating one of my older dorm-sisters. I hadn't learned their names at that point, but it was Kelenna, your grandmother, and he was Hugo Prewitt. Easy to recognise because of his bright red hair. Sitting watching them was another red-headed boy, whom I didn't know at the time. Turned out he was your other grandfather, Septimus Weasley. I'll get to the other boy in a moment."

"Anyway, Sally Abbott and Rosemary - there's another of those botanical names - McNeil and I watched for a bit, and then thought 'We can do that'. We got a quaffle from the store room, which was awfully big for our hands. We got some brooms, and then tried to figure out how to ride them holding the handle with only one hand, while juggling and passing the quaffle with the other. We didn't have quidditch gear, so just rode our brooms wearing our school skirts and blouses."

"Well, to say we were pitiful would be being very kind. We kept dropping the ball, and if we tried to get up any speed, our skirts would blow up into our faces. We had to land and tuck them in under our legs a couple of times. Meanwhile, the boys were getting faster and doing some really elaborate moves. Finally, Rosemary was throwing the quaffle to me, as I was distracted by one of the manoeuvres above me. I reached for the ball with both hands, and fell off my broom as I ran into the side of the viewing stand at what I felt was full speed. Luckily, if that is the word, I was wrong on the speed, but also, I was about twenty five feet above the ground. I landed very badly."

"I guess my scream attracted the attention of the boys. Sally told me later that the two flying ones zoomed down to me, and the one in the stands ran over to me. Sally and Rosey landed beside me as well."

"Sally took one look at my injuries, and started throwing up. The other boy turned to Rosemary and asked softly but firmly "Miss, could you hold your friend's hair out of the way. She will really appreciate it later". He then looked at me and tried not to gag himself. He turned to his flying companion and order "Hugo, get McPherson, now! Tell him she's bleeding badly!" He then turned to the other and said "Tim, get Summerville, as fast as you can". Hugo got on his broom and flew up to an open window of the infirmary, while the other boy ran into the castle. I have to admit that I was told about this afterwards, because I was going in and out of consciousness with the pain."

"The boy who stayed with me took off his belt, and tied it tightly around my upper thigh, pulled out his wand and did a 'Scourgify' spell, I guess to clean the dirt from my wounds. He then tugged on my skirt and pulled it down over my knees. (Rosemary told me later that my skirt had been up around my middle and my knickers were ripped and as she said, and I quote, 'he could see EVERYTHING!', not that I cared at that moment.)"

"The next thing I knew, Healer McPherson was beside us. He looked at the boy, and said "What is your diagnosis, Mr. Pomfrey?" The boy smiled at the Healer's salutation, then grimaced as he looked at the healer and said "Sir, she has compound fractures of the left forearm and femur. Her leg is bleeding badly and it was spurting so I think there's an artery damaged. I have applied a tourniquet on the leg. Multiple contusions and possible concussion from the fall." Mr McPherson took my right hand in both of his and pulled on two of my fingers, popping them back into alignment. He drew his wand and cast for pain reduction spells, then lifted my skirt and examined my leg."

"He looked at the boy and said, "Nice work, 'Healer' Pomfrey. You missed the dislocated fingers, but that is no matter because you _properly_ concentrated on the serious injuries. Now, please hold her left foot, and when I tell you, pull." After casting some spells that Rosemary didn't recognise, he took a piece of wood from his pouch and put it between my teeth, saying "Please bite down on this, Miss. Okay, Pomfrey, pull" as he cast some spells and my leg bone slid back under my skin and the skin closed up over it. He then did the same with my arm, and then did some diagnostic spells around my head. He undid the belt around my leg and drew my skirt down again. "

"The Healer was just conjuring a stretcher when Professor Summerville ran up with the other red-headed boy. She was our Head of House. The Healer turned to her and said "I'm taking this young lady up to the infirmary, and I would like you to bring the other two girls up there as well. From the look of things, I think they're in a bit of shock too, and I have some potions which should help. Can you accompany them, please, so that someone is with them if they faint?" The Professor agreed, and gave Rosemary and Sally a big hug each and told them that I was going to be alright now that the Healer was looking after me. Both of them were really pale, and Sally fainted. Seeing Sally go down, Rosemary sat down on the ground, hard, and looked faint too. I guess seeing all the blood got to them."

"I was told later that Mr McPherson asked the two larger of the boys to carry Rosey and Sally up to the infirmary, which they did."

"They let me out after about a week, with everything pretty much healed, except for these lovely scars which you noticed earlier. Sally and Rosemary had been given some calming draughts, and were released the next morning. We never tried to play quidditch again."

"While I was in the infirmary, Mr Pomfrey - I found out later his name was Ken - came to visit me every day. After the fifth day, I heard him speaking to the Healer, asking if he could work as an assistant in the infirmary. He said that he had felt real joy watching the Healer fix me up and thought that that was a good thing to do with his life. McPherson looked him up and down and told him that he would be glad to have him – the way he had handled himself in the emergency was very commendable, including the way that, even in such a stressful situation, he had concerned himself with the dignity and comfort of the young girl being sick, as well as pulling my skirt down so I was less exposed."

"About a week later, Sally started having nightmares, which got worse when everyone in our house started talking about the upcoming quidditch match against Hufflepuff. She started waking up in the night and throwing up. The week before game day, she was in really rough shape, and so I took her down to the infirmary. Healer McPherson listened to my and Sally's descriptions, and nodded. He looked at me and thanked me for bringing her to him, and then sat talking with her for several hours."

"She told me later on that he had contacted her parents and asked if he could bring in a mind-healer to speak with her, which they agreed to. The new healer just seemed to speak with her in a very calming way, several times over the next year and a half, talking about her shock at my injuries, her fears about her friends getting hurt or killed in the game, and things like that. After a couple weeks of the sessions every couple days, she seemed to be a bit better, and didn't have the panic attacks or the getting sick. She continued to get better over time, but she never did attend any quidditch games while she was at school."

"Both the mind-healer and Healer McPherson had some counselling sessions with Rosemary too, but she got over it more quickly. Her older brother had played quidditch in school, and had recovered from his injuries quickly, so she didn't feel as bad. Sally was the oldest in her family, and I guess in her own mind, she saw her little sister lying bleeding with her unable to do anything to help, so she took it really hard."

"So. A couple years later, during summer when I was home in Coventry, there was a massive air raid. I don't know if you are aware of the damage muggle warfare can do, but bombs kill witches and wizards as well as muggles. I had volunteered with the Red Cross to help out in the air raid shelters, passing out tea and biscuits, singing lullabies to children, and so on. One day, the raid happened while I was away from the shelter, and a bomb destroyed a house near where I was. I was a bit stunned but not hurt. The Air Raid Wardens' unit that came up to help tend to the injured and fight the fires arrived, and a young man came over to see if I was all right. It was Ken Pomfrey, who was also volunteering during his holidays before seventh year."

"After checking on me, and recognizing me - I had grown up some by then - he checked on others who were injured. There was a young girl who was badly injured, with just about the same injuries that I had had years before. I tried to assist him as he helped her as best he could, given the limited supplies. In spite of the Magical Secrecy Laws, he pulled out his wand, and was trying to heal her wounds as best he could when she died in our arms. We sat together crying for some time, before an older man, one of his mates, called him over and said softly 'I'm sorry, Pomfrey, but we've no time for that now. Later, I promise we'll all cry together, lad, but right now we have work to do!' "

"He looked at me and asked my name. When I told him it was Poppy Fields, he grinned and said 'I bet you get teased as bad as me with a name like that - my name's Wallace Simpson. Have to say that, unfortunately, your name is rather appropriate for what we have to do here, sometimes. Miss Fields, if your unit would care to join us later, our padre holds a short service after our shift. The lads find some comfort in it - I know I do. You would all be welcome to join us. And don't worry about using your little stick around us - one of your lot saved my leg at Ypres in the First War, so I would be a fool to object.' "

My unit joined his at the service after the raid, and we worked closely with them for the rest of the Blitz, saving those we could."

"I was in a daze for a couple days after that night. It hit me really hard, because I had had the same kind of injuries – it struck me that, without the efforts of Ken and Healer McPherson, I would have died too. At that point I had decided that being a healer was the most noble thing I could possibly do. I volunteered in the infirmary during the school year, and after graduating, I went into Healers' training. Ken and I married a year before I graduated."

Ginny sat drinking her hot chocolate. Enthralled with the story, she asked "Can I meet your husband, some day?"

A tear came to Poppy's eye as she shook her head. "I am sorry. No. When the Korean War started, he signed up as a medical officer. They needed both muggles and wizards who knew something about frostbite, and mental disorders, and as he was in the medical corps reserve, he got called up. He didn't make it back. We had decided not to have children until he got de-mobbed."

Ginny looked like she was going to break into tears herself, as she asked "Then how did you end up at Hogwarts? You had mentioned that you worked with a professional quidditch team."

Poppy nodded. "Oh, yes. That. Well, after graduating from Healers' training, I decided to take some training at a muggle medical school, as much for something to do with my now-empty life as anything else, and was studying surgery. Because of the Secrecy Statute, I couldn't use magic, and I was getting really frustrated by it, even though I was learning an awful lot of muggle medical techniques. Then one day, a patient came in wearing a rugby jersey, with injuries like I had seen from quidditch matches. We worked on him for several hours, and got him stabilized, and eventually his broken leg healed. His injured leg was now a couple inches shorter than the other, and his professional playing career was over. I was so frustrated, because I knew that if I had been allowed to use Skele-Grow and some healing spells, he could have been completely healed and fully functional in a couple days. I wanted to find somewhere to work where I could use all my skills and training. I quit the hospital, and put out enquiries for any team needing a team healer with extensive experience in sports injuries. The Bats hired me right away and I was with them for five years."

"After a while, I noticed that the players were getting the same injuries over and over and over. Like they not only didn't learn, but couldn't or _wouldn't_ learn. On top of that, when I tried to speak to them to calm them or help their attitudes, they resisted any idea that they weren't 'tough enough'. Too much testosterone, I guess. I got to feel that whatever I did, I was not making any _lasting_ difference. Nothing was getting _better_. "

"After a while of that, I decided what I really wanted to do was the same as was done for me and my friends – to heal the body, but also to heal the mind. With healer techniques when necessary, but sometimes just a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to. To help young witches and wizards who were trying to learn their way in the world and finding it was a rough place, but where they really had little option but to find their way. To do for others what others had done for me and my friends, and to have some _lasting_ influence that would maybe make the world a bit better. To pay back the life-debts I felt I had accumulated."

"I applied at Hogwarts, and a couple other schools around the world. I was never good at languages, so I pretty much concentrated on English-speaking countries."

"I got a job in America for a couple years, and a couple years in New Zealand where I learned some of the Maori healing magic. A few years later, I got a letter from Professor Dumbledore, who had just taken over as Headmaster, asking if I would consider taking over when Healer McPherson retired. I worked as his assistant for a couple years, and I've been here since then."

She looked at her hourglass, and standing and dropping her robes, said "Enough of an old lady's memories. Let's see how your young man is doing. It's time for the second treatment."


	6. The Sisterhood

**Ginny Weasley and the Seemingly Extraneous Details**

**Disclaimer:** I have no claim to characters or scenes from the Harry Potter series, which belongs to JK Rowling and associates. I get nothing from this except the enjoyment of imagining and writing the story. I am making no money from this, bupkus, nada, sweet-tweet, diddly-squat. All errors are my own.

**Rating**: M

**Warning**: Implications of things that every teenager is keenly aware of, to their parents' distress, but nothing really happening

**Author's Notes**: Thanks to Clell65619 for 'beta'ing this one. However, I have incorporated only some of his/her suggestions, so don't blame him/her. Hopefully that which was unclear has become clear.

**The Sisterhood**

After conducting the second round of healing spells, Madam Pomfrey checked her diagnostic spells again, and nodded to herself. She looked at Ginny Weasley, and said to the young witch, "One more set should do it. He's almost ready to go."

Ginny looked down at the unconscious Harry Potter, lying in the bed in front of her naked body, and smiled. She looked at the older woman and said "That's good. We want him in top condition, don't we?"

The matron looked at Ginny and asked with a smirk on her face "Top condition for _what_, young lady?" The two laughed.

Poppy nodded to Ginny and said (more than asked) "You intended to have sex with him this evening, didn't you?"

Ginny blushed a little, as she put her robe back on and lifted her mug of hot chocolate. "Well, not really '_SEX'_ sex, but yes, I did. Didn't work out so well, did it? But yes, I intended to 'seduce' Harry a little bit tonight. Get things started with him. I mean, Mum expects me to marry him someday."

The older woman looked at Ginny intently. "But is that what _you_ want?"

Ginny thought about this question for a moment. It was a question which she had been turning over in her head for a long time. Ginny nodded, and responded "I think so."

Poppy looked at the young woman carefully and asked simply "Why?"

Ginny looked very surprised. "That's a very odd question. What do you mean? Why Harry? Why tonight? Why did I want to have it on with him, or marry him for that matter? What?"

Poppy looked at her, and said simply "Yes, to all those questions. Actually, the question of 'why tonight?', is rather immaterial. It's as good a night as any, although a Saturday does give you time to prepare your outfit and makeup, and then have Sunday to recover, if that's what it takes. But why Harry? And why now? You're rather young for it, aren't you?"

"Was it because you were still enamoured of the stories of the Boy-Who-Lived? I thought you were over that. Was it because some of your friends were becoming sexually active and you didn't want to feel left out? Was it because you wanted to, so to speak, 'stake your claim' to Harry before any other girls got to him? I understand that there is a Harry Potter fan club in the school – did you worry that one of those other girls might try to seduce Harry first?"

Ginny's face took on a bit of a wicked smile. "Yeah, a number of Harry's fan club would drop their knickers in a heartbeat if he gave them any encouragement at all. And not just the girls!"

Poppy then added "Would it surprise you to know that a number of the witches on staff have speculated on having a 'go' at him, too?" This did surprise and shock the young witch, to which Poppy added "Won't happen. _Can't_ happen. When we join the staff here, we all give an oath to behave with absolute decorum, a magical oath. It would be totally unacceptable for a staff member to be romantically involved with a student. However, after he leaves school, he's 'fair game'." She laughed heartily at Ginny's shocked expression.

"Ah, Miss Weasley. You have to realize that, up here in the Highlands, the winter nights are long and cold, and we do a lot of sitting around gossiping and fantasizing. It's nothing to worry about." She smiled and added "Well, not yet, anyway."

"But why Harry? Why not Mr Longbottom? He's from an old, respected and rich pure-blood family. He's growing to be a tall handsome young man. In first year, he stood up to Harry and your brother and Miss Granger. A lot of young witches would think him an excellent catch."

"Or there's Mr Finch-Fletchley. He's from a rich muggle family, but you may not be willing to accept a muggle-born boy. How do you feel about muggles?"

"There's your brothers, too. There are rumours about some pure-bloodists who want to keep the families so 'pure' that you hear stories of a sister who disappears, and a previously unknown cousin shows up and marries the heir to the family fortune. After all, in ancient Egypt, the royal families of the Pharaohs married siblings. Or is that a little too 'purist' for you?"

Ginny shook her head. "You've got me going in all sorts of directions here."

"As to my brothers. Ewww, yuck! Merlin, no! Blech! It may have worked in ancient Egypt, but not in my life. No way!"

"As to muggles. I have nothing against them, as a group. I mean, from things we talked about over the summers at home, and the boys having to rescue Harry that one year when his relatives put bars on his window, I get the strong impression that Harry's family is really terrible people, and if they were the only muggles there were, I would really not want anything to do with them. But I've met Hermione's parents, and they seem really nice. I know my Granddad Tim - he always said that his full name was too _fancy_ for 'everyday' - was fascinated by muggle technology, and my dad still is, even though they can't figure it out, and Dad can't even seem to pronounce the words properly. There are an awful lot more muggles than witches and wizards, maybe hundreds of times more".

"Actually about ten thousand times as many", Poppy quietly interjected to Ginny's surprise.

"They seem to get by without magic, and _they_ can do things _we_ can't. Did you know they have airplanes that can hold all of the students from Hogwarts, _all in one plane_? And my dad can't figure out how they fly without magic. Hermione told me it was something called 'physics', but that's about as useless as explaining something we do by just calling it 'magic' – it's a label, not an explanation!"

"And Dad doesn't understand it. Or so he _claims_! You know, I _really_ don't think he is as clueless as he seems. I mean, with his work at the ministry, leading raids on possible dark wizards misusing muggle artefacts; maybe being 'known' as a bit dim is a good cover story - if your enemies are convinced that they are brighter than you are, they may seriously underestimate you. Considering that in the war with What's-His-Name, Mum's two older brothers were both killed, but our immediate family came without _any_ injuries. Except for Mum's getting really overprotective. They can't be that dumb, unless the Death Eaters are even stupider. And I wouldn't bet my life on _that_."

Ginny took a deep breath, and decided to take a chance. She had seen Madam Pomfrey show up at their house at times when there appeared to be secret meetings, and she suspected that the Matron was part of the secret club with her parents. She said, "You know, I mentioned that I get the feeling that there is another war coming, and that my parents are in a group working against the dark wizards. Poppy, I believe that you are also a member of that club, and that the Headmaster is the leader. Yes?"

Poppy smiled, and said "I will not confirm anything of the sort."

Ginny smiled back and said, "I'll take that as a 'Yes' then. Anyway."

"You mentioned bombs from the war. Harry has told us about some of the muggle weapons and wars – scares the hell out of me. Sometimes, I think that the reason for all the secrecy, and the pure-bloodists supposed hatred of muggles, is that the muggles could wipe us off the face of the earth, and we would not be missed in the least. It would be like us stepping on a bug. There have been battles where more muggles died than all the wizards and witches in England, France, Scotland and Ireland combined, and they did it over and over and over again. I have heard that the things you say you hate, are just the things you fear the most, but don't want to admit that you fear them. Take Draco Malfoy, for example. He claims to hate muggles and muggle-borns, Harry in particular, but Hermione punched him out, and every time he comes up against Harry, he comes off second best or worse. Hermione is smarter, and Harry is stronger. And Draco's family is supposed to be the epitome of pure-blood power and wealth, and he is the _brightest_ of the bigots he hangs around with. Some display of pure-blood superiority!"

"Mostly, I don't really think a lot about muggles. It seems like they are just living in a different country, like America, or Australia, or more one that speaks a different language. I don't know that I would fit in their world, and they wouldn't fit in with ours, but they're not bad people because of it. We could learn to get along, but it would take an effort."

Ginny noted that Poppy was nodding and smiling at her statement. Again, she felt like she had just passed some kind of a test.

"Anyway, Justin's family may be rich, and they may be muggles, but I just don't know him at all, so I don't think so. Neville's a really nice guy, but he is awfully shy and doesn't have much confidence, so he seems a bit of a wimp. Really doesn't interest me."

"But Harry. He's cute, a bit shy, but brave as anything. I mean, Mum's been after me to fall in love with him since I was little, before I even knew he was a real person and not just a story-book hero. We talked before about 'hero-worship' but that's not it. I kind of wonder how all the stories about him knew anything about him, because he disappeared after his parents were killed. For example, how did everyone know about his scar? But a hero? Maybe yes, I mean he saved Hermione and he saved me – does that mean I have a life-debt to him and I have to sleep with him? I don't know, and I really don't care."

"Last year, at the start of the tournament, everyone thought he had cheated, and was lying because he wanted the glory. That's not him at all. He hates that part of it. He hated being forced into the tournament. Did you know he gave my twin brothers his winnings to set up their shop?"

"Why Harry? All I know is that I admire him a lot, and I get excited when I'm around him."

Poppy looked at the girl and asked "What do you think of the idea that a woman's instinctive and inherent genetic drive is to get the best possible father for her children?"

Ginny was silent for a couple of minutes. "Makes sense. But what do you mean by the 'best'?"

Poppy nodded, and said "Good response to a very hard but very important question. I think every woman has her own answer to that. For some, it's a man who can protect her in a harsh world. For others, it's someone who is rich enough to provide for the raising of her children. You know, some more radical women claim that marriage is just a legalized and acceptable form of exclusive prostitution, where a woman sells herself to a man for material support – I gather that in some of the wealthy pure-blood families, and in olden times, young women were essentially the bartering chips for family alliances, and the marriages had nothing whatsoever to do with love."

"I would hope that the 'best' father is someone who you can admire, who behaves well, and does his best to protect and provide for his wife and children. A 'best' man would not put his family in jeopardy, or leave them for his own selfish purposes."

"Okay, that's the women's point-of- view, or at least _this_ woman's point-of-view. What do you think of the idea that for a man, the genetic imperative is to have as many children as possible, most likely with as many women as possible, to maximize his genetic influence. If you look at the animal kingdom, you see the lead buck in the herd has the exclusive right to breed with as many females as he can gather and protect from other males. He dominates his group by fighting off the other males who aren't as strong or as clever, or whatever traits that particular species uses for dominance. So-called 'inferior' males don't get to mate at all, unless they can eventually take over from the dominant male as he gets too old or weak."

Ginny nodded. "Interesting idea. It certainly would explain why powerful old men keep sending young men to be killed in wars. It would also explain why there have been a lot of dark wizards, but very few dark witches. The basic drives would be different."

Poppy then looked Ginny in the eyes, and asked, "Would you say that these basic drives are incompatible?"

Ginny again nodded. As her brow furrowed in thought, she said, "Using those two ideas, if they are true, a man's imperative is to spread out his resources for many children, while a woman's is to concentrate those same resources for the benefit of her own offspring. Not the same thing at all."

Poppy smiled again, and asked, "How about this? Feudalism, which some people claim is the only truly stable form of government, is basically the concentration of power and wealth into the hands of a small group of people, and the maintenance of this situation over time through family and political bonds. What would you say to the idea that the apparent program of the pure-blood wizarding families is the same?"

Ginny shook her head. "Not all wizarding families! That sounds like a bit of the Ancient Houses you hear about in the Wizengamot trying to hold on to their power, and the dark wizards after their own _personal_ power and glory. That certainly doesn't hold for my family, or the Longbottoms, or the Greengrasses or the Lovegoods."

Poppy commented, "So you are saying that the families on the side of the Light would be against this concentration of power. Is this right? But what about the idea that you need the political power to have enough influence to change things for the better?"

Ginny asked, "Do you have to do it through political ways? Aren't there other ways to change things?"

Poppy answered, "I would hope so. Would you say the idea that this holding of personal or familial political power, which some would say is just an extension of the male drive to dominate or propagate over a larger population, may be counterproductive to the general improvement of the population of the world?

Ginny sat back, and took a deep drink of her hot chocolate. "I never thought of it in that way. It makes sense, but what about the claim that the people at the top are there because they are already superior, and that they should be given power because they are superior?"

Poppy asked with a bit of a smirk, "Are you agreeing with Draco Malfoy now?"

Ginny gasped, "Oh Merlin, I just did, didn't I? Oh no."

Poppy added, "Don't worry about it. You made a good point that a lot of people accept, not just the Malfoys and other purists, but what if you added the requirement that, to prove they are indeed really superior, they have to show superior behaviour, and not just that they have power? Some get to the top because they are the meanest, nastiest and most ruthless, and nothing more. There is a saying that power corrupts, so unless the power is coupled with good behaviour, they cannot be said to be truly superior. Someone claiming superiority, but without good behaviour, is a fraud, and even a threat to the well-being of the community. That is, they are going 'dark'. Yes?"

Ginny nodded, "That makes more sense. To be 'superior', you have to behave 'superior'."

Poppy's face now turned serious. "Can you see that a program to _really_ improve the condition of _all_ people would be seen as a serious threat to those who want to maintain or expand their own personal and private power, even if it is for their family and not just themselves alone?"

Ginny asked, "Like the ones fighting the dark wizards? Like Harry, and his parents? And my family? And your secret club?"

Poppy nodded, "Yes. And this is why I am afraid that there is going to be another war. And it is going to be soon."

"However, Ginny, I want to suggest something else as well. You have trusted me with your conclusions about the 'secret club'. If this is true, you would be in a position to put your family in great danger. If the membership of a secret club like that became known to the dark wizards, it would put all their lives in peril. And if I was a dark witch, you would have just proved to me that you are too dangerous to be allowed to live. Either that, or to have you join the dark wizards, which would require killing your family."

"Ginny, I am going to trust you with something as well. I have to warn you that this is secret, and that I have sworn an Unbreakable Oath to reveal it to no one that I would not trust with my life. If you reveal this information, I will die! Others will then kill you. Do you understand?"

Ginny blanched at this statement of trust, but nodded. "I swear I will not reveal what you are going to tell me." She pointed her wand at her own heart as she said this.

Poppy sighed and said, "Ginny, there are several secret groups trying to improve mankind, muggle and wizarding. In American, there is a organization called the Howard Foundation which is promoting human longevity through a breeding program. Their program only addresses the lifespan of their subject group, called the 'Howard families' - although strangely, none of them are named 'Howard' - and does not really address the _quality_ of the people they deal with."

"I belong to a group, which consists of witches who have become convinced that what has been called the 'best' of humanity must be protected and nurtured. We have decided that one essential measure of what makes someone '_the best' _is their_ behaviour_! We have taken as our watch-word a phrase used in legal contracts where someone is appointed to a responsible and important office. It goes 'Quamdiu se bene gesserit' which means "As long as he behaves himself well'. Our organization is patterned roughly on religious orders, with the head of each chapter being addressed as the Mother Superior, and the members as Sisters. So far, we call our group 'The Sisterhood'."

"For our own security, only the Reverend Mothers know who the other Reverend Mothers are, and only the Reverend Mothers know the memberships within their own chapters – it's not perfectly secure, but as every group is protected by Unbreakable Oaths and commitments to suicide to prevent capture, it's the best we can do so far."

"Ginny, I would like you to participate in our program, and perhaps even join the sisterhood when you become an adult and have the authority to commit yourself to our oaths." "

Currently, our work is only looking to preserve the genetic material of people we consider worthy of being protected from the war that is coming. I am sure you can see that our program is in direct opposition to the program of He-Who-Cannot-Be-Named and his followers, so we have to keep it secret, and the location of our storage vaults must also remain secret. I cannot tell you where any of these are without seeking permission from my Mother Superior."

Ginny was stunned by these revelations. "I don't know what to say. How does this work?"

Poppy looked at the young witch, and said, "We take samples of the genetic materials of those we consider are worth saving, so that, if they should not survive the coming war, we will have the resources to restore their genetic lines. Muggle medicine has developed techniques where eggs and sperm can be mixed in a glass dish or 'test-tube' instead of inside the potential mother's body, and then the fertilized egg is implanted inside a woman's womb – she may or may not be even related to the woman who donated the eggs. We can use any body tissues, and use them to recreate either the original person, or rather what is called a clone, as the new person would not have the original's life experience. Alternately, we could use the eggs of a suitable woman and suitable man, and give a start to a child they never had, and perhaps because of their deaths, they never could have had."

Ginny looked shocked, "That sound awfully spooky. Aren't you afraid that you might be creating monsters?"

Poppy nodded, "Absolutely. We are terrified of the possible consequences of our work. But we are even more frightened by the possibility that the 'best' of our people might be exterminated."

Ginny thought for a moment. "How does the genetic material help with the question of behaviour? I would think that has to do with how they are brought up."

Poppy nodded. "I know. This is another unknown. The program calls for the embryos from people we have accepted, based on their behaviour, be implanted only in women who also pass our criteria of 'good behaviour'. We want to give the best start to what is possibly a 'better' child. We don't know what is going to happen, but we _do_ know that a lot of good people are going to be killed. We have to do something, and this is something we _can_ do. Perhaps in the future, we can do more."

"We started talking about this during and after the second world war, when the Nazi program of racial extermination became known. After the first Voldemort war, when a lot of 'Light' wizards and witches got killed, and those of us with some knowledge of muggle medicine learned about the new in-glass - called 'In Vitro Fertilization'- techniques, we decided we had to act. By the time we got organized, Harry's parents were dead, so we could not include their genetic material, nor that of your uncles. We had to start somewhere. We had to."

Ginny thought about what she had just been told. She looked at the Matron and asked, "How do you decide what counts as 'good behaviour'?"

Poppy nodded. "Good question. We have discussed this over and over, as it is the most important part of our plan."

"We came up with one basic criterion, that anyone who harmed, or advocates harming anyone who cannot defend themselves, is behaving badly, and is not to be included in our protected samples. In history, there have been many who have hurt others, either individually or groups, for political reasons, racist reasons, or for personal gain. I mentioned the Nazi programs of racial extermination. Under Stalin, many Ukrainian peasants were starved to death for political reasons. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge tried to exterminate all who were educated. The Death Eaters are killing muggles, who have absolutely no way to defend against dark magic."

She lifted Harry's left hand, showing the recent scarring. "There is a teacher on staff right now who will definitely _not_ be included in our collection!"

Ginny sat quietly for a couple minutes, glancing over at Harry and thinking that he might not survive the next couple years, that she might not survive either, and the possibility of children, _their_ children, living in a future world after they had been killed. She shuddered at the thoughts, and then looked at Madam Pomfrey. She sighed, and said, "Okay, I'm in. What do you need from me?"

Poppy looked carefully at the young witch. Ginny was shocked when Poppy answered, "I need some of your eggs and Harry's sperm."

A/N: Louise Brown (in England) and Kanupriya Agarwal (in India) were conceived through in-vitro fertilization and both born in 1978. The first human birth by donation of eggs from one woman given for implantation in another was in 1984.


	7. Donations

**Ginny Weasley and the Seemingly Extraneous Details**

**Disclaimer:** I have no claim to characters or scenes from the Harry Potter series, which belongs to JK Rowling and associates. I get nothing from this except the enjoyment of imagining and writing the story. I am making no money from this, bupkus, nada, sweet-tweet, diddly-squat. All errors are my own.

**Rating**: M

**Warning**: Implications of things that every teenager is keenly aware of, to their parents' distress, but nothing really happening

**Author's Notes**: Thanks to Clell65619 for 'beta'ing this one. However, I have incorporated only some of his/her suggestions, so don't blame him/her. Hopefully that which was unclear has become clear.

**Donations**

Ginny stared at Madam Pomfrey and exclaimed "What!"

Poppy repeated, "I need to collect some of your eggs and Harry's sperm, as well as some other cells. The others I can get from a skin sample or a swab of the inside of your cheeks. There is some genetic material that you can only get from whole cells and a woman's eggs, and that only come from the mother and her mother, and so on. We would like to get some of Lily Potter's mitochondrial DNA. We have some from samples I took other times Harry was in here, but usually there are so many people around, I can't do a proper collection without raising suspicions, and that cannot be allowed"

Ginny grimaced. "Do you have to cut me open to get at my eggs? I mean, they're deep inside me, aren't they?"

Poppy smiled, "No I don't need to do any surgery, Ginny. I can extract them from your ovaries with a spell similar to apparition."

Ginny looked at Poppy, and did some rapid calculations in her head. "But what if I need them to have children myself? What if I 'run out'?"

Poppy smiled again. "An excellent question that most girls don't know the answer to. At your age, you would typically have over 400 thousand eggs in your ovaries – at birth you had almost 2 million. Usually only one egg develops to be mature enough to become a baby if it is fertilised; if not, your body will expel it during your period. You actually lose about 1000 eggs per month, but only one, or sometimes a few, develop to the point of viability. I plan to take only a couple hundred immature eggs, which you will most likely never miss."

"Now, perhaps one of the eggs I take would have been the one that became your third child. There's no way of knowing that, but the chances are very small. But if we survive this coming war, I can put them back, if you insist."

"Now, given your plan for 'seducing' Harry tonight, I suspect that you are likely at the most receptive point in your cycle, which means you have a mature egg in the works. Now, unless you are planning to get yourself pregnant this month, I would like to extract that as well, which would be a bonus for the program – mature eggs are rare in our collection."

With a giggle, she added, "A side benefit, if you wish to call it that, is that you would be effectively sterile for the rest of this month, so any activities you have planned would be without the usual consequences for a girl your age." As Ginny blushed, Poppy added with a sigh, "It's something I have to deal with all the time. Sometimes I'm surprised this place doesn't have a kindergarten."

Ginny nodded. "Okay, that seems okay to me. But what about Harry? Do I have to, I don't know, _assist_ the extraction?" By now, Ginny's blush was so intense that her bright red hair was look quite pale by comparison.

Poppy decided to tease the young witch a bit, by saying "Well, you could, if you wanted to. What did you have in mind?"

By this point Ginny was sputtering and gasping. "I mean, I've seen pictures in some magazines my dorm sisters have, and that they pass around when we are having 'girl-talks'." She conjured up a magazine from her dorm. She turned the pages to some pictures showing a young witch 'entertaining' a young wizard. She showed some of the pictures to Poppy, and asked, "But do I have to do _THAT, or this, or even, oh Merlin, please not THIS?"_

Poppy smiled a wickedly teasing smile and said, "No child, you certainly don't. I can use a similar spell to the one I will use to harvest your eggs. Now, if your evening had proceeded further than what you have told me that you intended, I could have collected his sperm from inside _you_, or if you and he used one of those muggle flexible devices, from inside _it_. But if you _really_ want to,..." Ginny was shaking her head vigorously.

Suddenly, Ginny frowned. "Shouldn't you ask Harry's permission? I mean, this seems to be a rather personal invasion of his body?"

Poppy nodded as she sighed, "Another very good point, Ginny. That very thing has caused a lot of heartfelt discussion in the Sisterhood, particularity those of us who are Healers. It seems very unethical, and raises serious issues of 'informed consent' for medical procedures."

"We came to the conclusion that we have to do this unbeknownst to the 'donors', other than other Sisters, for reasons of secrecy. How 'secret' could we be if we have to get permission from all our donors? And, as I told you, all our lives are in danger if this program becomes known in certain circles. It calls into question whether we ourselves are 'behaving well'. However, if nothing else, we are trying to save these priceless genetic materials from extinction." Poppy smiled a bit, and added, "There is a story from Zen Buddhism, saying that something can be considered priceless if nobody can name its price. Still, it is a slippery path which we will have to deal with sometime, perhaps once the war is over, if we are still around to argue about it then."

Ginny then asked a question which had started to bother her throughout her discussion. "Poppy, just _whose_ materials are you collecting?"

The Healer nodded, "A valid and perceptive question. And a very hard one. As we are really just getting started on this, we have been collecting as much as we can, except where the behaviour is clearly unacceptable, as I told you earlier. For this reason, in my role as the school Healer, we, or rather I, collect as much as I can. The Sisterhood meets and decides whether to keep or discard the material from specific persons. We have come to the conclusion that we can sample the materials, but we don't really need to keep it is the persons turns out bad."

Ginny looked puzzled at this. "Can't you tell right away? I mean there are students here that I would not mind seeing go extinct."

The medi-witch nodded. "There are always those we feel that way about. But you know, some of them feel the same way about you and your family, and there are some who make no effort to hide that fact. Whose opinion should we go with, Ginny?"

Ginny knew they were talking about Draco Malfoy and his group of bigots.

Poppy said "I see you know exactly who we are talking about at the moment. However, the most critical example is, or rather was, Harry's father."

Ginny was stunned by this statement. "I thought Harry's father was supposed to be a wonderful man. Brave, smart , a good father for the time he was alive."

Poppy nodded. "He was. But he and his friends were royal hellions when they were at school. James used to bully another student, who is now your potions professor – that is the main reason he hates Harry so much. You know Professor Lupin was a werewolf, and Sirius Black was put in Azkaban for betraying the Potters and killing one of his friends and some muggles. They were James' best friends at school. If we had decided to discard James' material based on his school behaviour, we would have lost it for good, or for ill come to that."

"Consider what little beasts we all are or were when we were young. Humans didn't get to the top of the food chain by being nice. It's only when we see how they turn out as adults that we can really decide whether they are suitable for continued 'preservation'. And as this is really the first generation that we have been collecting material from, there are a lot of unknowns."

"For example, your twin brothers are on the probationary list. Some of their pranks, which you so rightly call bullying, have the potential to seriously injure people. Many of those people, as you mentioned talking about your primary school days, cannot defend themselves. Your brothers may grow out of it, or not. Your brother Percy is also on the watch list – he is a very clever lad, he was Head Boy after all, but his ambition to follow the lead of politicians, who do not necessarily have the good of the community at heart, is very troubling to a lot of us."

"Another good example of not jumping to conclusions is the Black family. Given the time, we were not able to collect anything from Sirius Black at the time, but he was definitely under suspicion given his behaviour as a student, and we probably would have thrown his material away when he was sent to prison. Now we find that that would have been a tragic mistake, and there is now the possibility of collecting some cells from him. Actually, his entire family would have been on the probationary list, and most of their contributions to the program thrown out. With notable exceptions like your Grandmother Cedrella Black, and Sirius' cousin Andromeda, they have not been behaving well, to say the least! In retrospect, it seems like the best commendation the Black family can give one of their members is to disown them."

"There are a number of other students, and I suspect you know who they are, who are definitely on the probationary lists. Some of their parents have definitely been identified as Death Eaters, and their children are apparently following their lead. But we have to give them the benefit of the doubt, for the moment. If they survive the war, and 'our' side wins, they may straighten up. If not, it is a simple matter to pull the appropriate container from the depository, and move it to the trash. Simple, but with profound importance. Who knows what the combination of genes will do in a hundred or a thousand years. Maybe those traits are something that will be critically important. We can't be sure."

"Perhaps in a few hundred or thousand years, we will be using our knowledge of genetics and people's behaviour to influence events across the galaxy. Or maybe not. I won't be around to see it, and I have to work with the intelligence and abilities I have, here and now."

Ginny was looking very pensive, and also very nervous. She asked, "Poppy, did you know that Professor Snape can read minds? He has been trying to teach, if you can call it _that_, Harry to protect his thoughts. Harry calls what Snape is doing to him 'mind-rape'."

Poppy nodded, and looked a bit worried. She was becoming quite worried that she may have told Ginny too much. If Snape, or the Dark Lord, read Ginny's mind, Poppy and a lot of her friends and associates were in serious danger, and most likely mortal peril.

Ginny nodded, and sat up straighter in her chair. "Madam Pomfrey, I assume you know the spells to eliminate memories. I need you to eliminate my memories of our conversations tonight. I don't want to be responsible for getting you killed because I can't prevent _them_ from reading my mind. I don't know if you can save the memories for later, or block them so that no-one but you can unlock them, or just erase them completely and permanently, but I need them to be gone. Once this war is over, perhaps we can have another talk, because I want to help, and I think I want to join your Sisterhood. But we have to get rid of this Dark Lord Voldemort first. I can't, and certainly you can't, afford to have these memories in my head until that is done."

Poppy nodded. "Okay, once we have done the 'collecting' and before we 'treat' Harry for the last time, I will obliviate you, that is, remove the memories of tonight's talk, and what we have done. Then we can do the final spells on Harry, and you can sit with him until he wakes up. You can use the bed next to his if you like, if you need to sleep." She flicked her wand, and the second bed slid over to the one Harry was in. "There, if you like, you can hold his hand, even if you fall asleep."

Ginny Weasley sat holding Harry Potter's hand as he lay unconscious in Hogwarts infirmary. Between the magical medical treatments for his concussion, she had had an interesting talk with Madam Pomfrey, who told her about how she herself had become a Healer. Ginny thought that the Healing profession sounded like a very worthwhile way to spend your life. That is, of course, on top of her long-term plan to marry Harry and bear him as many children as he (and she) wanted, so that he would finally have the loving family that he craved.

She also planned to help Harry however she could in his fight against the dark wizard who kept trying to kill him. That afternoon, they had talked about starting a club to practise ways to fight back. And maybe, she thought in the back of her mind, there was a way to fix the wizarding world so that they wouldn't have dark wizards and dark lords showing up every now and again. Maybe they could somehow get the 'good' people together and breed the goodness in and the badness out. But that wasn't possible, was it?


End file.
